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Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.

Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its flaws, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to It's A Wonderful Life. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

"At the time of his death, Eddie was an old man with a barrel chest and a torso as squat as a soup can," writes Albom, author of the bestselling phenomenon Tuesdays with Morrie, in a brief first novel that is going to make a huge impact on many hearts and minds. Wearing a work shirt with a patch on the chest that reads "Eddie" over "Maintenance," limping around with a cane thanks to an old war injury, Eddie was the kind of guy everybody, including Eddie himself, tended to write off as one of life's minor characters, a gruff bit of background color. He spent most of his life maintaining the rides at Ruby Pier, a seaside amusement park, greasing tracks and tightening bolts and listening for strange sounds, "keeping them safe." The children who visited the pier were drawn to Eddie "like cold hands to a fire." Yet Eddie believed that he lived a "nothing" life-gone nowhere he "wasn't shipped to with a rifle," doing work that "required no more brains than washing a dish." On his 83rd birthday, however, Eddie dies trying to save a little girl. He wakes up in heaven, where a succession of five people are waiting to show him the true meaning and value of his life. One by one, these mostly unexpected characters remind him that we all live in a vast web of interconnection with other lives; that all our stories overlap; that acts of sacrifice seemingly small or fruitless do affect others; and that loyalty and love matter to a degree we can never fathom. Simply told, sentimental and profoundly true, this is a contemporary American fable that will be cherished by a vast readership. Bringing into the spotlight the anonymous Eddies of the world, the men and women who get lost in our cultural obsession with fame and fortune, this slim tale, like Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, reminds us of what really matters here on earth, of what our lives are given to us for.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Top customer reviews

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Oh my gosh! I loved reading this book! It makes you think about so many things in your life. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly religious in any sense, just a very interested way to think of heaven and why things happened to you while you were alive. I will recommend this book for the reat of my life and I can’t wait to read it again. It is a very quick read. I couldn’t put it down!! You will love it!

Great book with many valuable lesons in it. Regardless of what religion you practice, if any, you should read this book. It's spritual, but not specific to one religion. The lessons are universal and ignites a passion for humanity. Couldn't put this book down!

I enjoyed the new angle for me of looking back at your life through the eyes of others. This book is an easy read. I found the main character and his story compelling. Given that there were "Five People", I found some of the five interesting, and a couple of them a bit random. It was easy to think about your own life and speculate on who might be in your five people, and if you would be included within the five of others.

I was inspired to reread this because a church youth group I help with is watching the movie and discussing each of the five people that Eddie meets in heaven and the lessons they share with him. Mitch Albom paints an interesting picture of what heaven might be. There is something appealing about an afterlife where one's human existence is explained in an unfolding way, where unknown and unknowable connections are shared. And, for us still on earth, it's a reminder that there aren't many stories unfolding around us. There's only one, with many, many connections.

No spoilers! Eddie is a maintenance man at an amusement park. He takes care of his customers--esp. children--. Oneday an accident occurs at a ride called Freddie's Freefall--a girl is in danger and Eddie comes to the rescue. He dies tryingto save her. Was he successful? That is the question that haunts Eddie as he enters a purgatory-like afterlife. So beginsthe spiritual journey where he meets five people who affected his life. It is a tour de force about an ordinary man who hadan extraordinary life. The ending is terrific--an unexpected, happy tearjerker! I highly recommend this book as well asTUESDAYS WITH MORRIE.

Lately, heaven as been a hot topic, as Todd Burpo's Heaven is for Real has hit number one on the New York Times Best Seller list, Don Piper's memoir 90 Minutes in Heaven remains wildly successful, and Rob Bell's LOVE WINS: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is the talk of the spiritual town. And in that circle of books about heaven is Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The concept of this novel is imaginative: Eddie, a carnival mechanic, dies and upon reaching heaven meets five people who each teach him a lesson that gets him closer to understanding the purpose and meaning of his life. With the last lesson, he fully grasps why he was put on earth.

My biggest problem with the book was that I didn't find it believable. I'm not sure if the culprit was its flat characters, or its simplistic plot, or its structure, or if it was the character of Eddie himself, whose portrayal I found cliché: a widowed, struggling mechanic, who has nothing going for him. Most importantly, though, I didn't feel that the author was able to make his version of heaven real. I'll admit that it was refreshing to read a picture of heaven that is different from a cloud puffed haven where beings look down on earth. But the heaven depicted by Albom, I simply couldn't picture it in my mind. Plus, none of the "lessons" were anything I hadn't heard of before.

Things that worked: strong writing, an innovative and appealing idea, and a comforting concept for those of us who have recently had loved ones pass. Also touching is the idea that everyone's life, no matter what they chose to do with it, matters equally in the higher realm. The highlight of the story is when Eddie meets his wife (the fourth person), who gives him the lesson of love. She tells him that when a loved one dies, that love is still there, but it just takes a different form. "Memory becomes your partner," she says. "You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn't."

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a quick and uplifting read, so I'd still recommend it for those interested in the afterlife, existential ideas, or the mysterious inner workings of the universe.